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6 7^ 




stand by the Republican Colors! 



SPEECH 



HON. HENRY WILSON, 

AT GREAT FALLS, NEW HAMPSHIRE, FEBRUARY 24, 1872. 



Mr. Chairman, Ladies and GentleTnen : 

During the year on which we have entered 
the people of the United States will be sum- 
moned to elect a Chief Magistrate. There 
are seven million persons in the country 
entitled to the right of suffrage. They are 
now ranged into two great political parties. 
One calls itself the Democratic party ; the 
other takes the name of the Republican party. 
Each of those political organizations has a 
history, a platform of principles, and a pro- 
gramme of policy. To one or the other of 
these parties the people of the United States 
will commit, for four years, the precious inter- 
ests of the R'^public. It devolves upon the 
citizens of New Hampshire to give the first 
vote of the campaign upon which we are enter- 
ing. Whatever may be the result, it will be 
deemed and taken throughout the country as 
an indication of public sentiment, and the 
victory, to whichever party it may come, will 
give to that party in the nation more num- 
bers than it has voters in the State of New 
Hampshire. 

I come here to-night in behalf of the Repub- 
lican party of the United States, three and 
a half million strong, to speak to the Re- 
publicans of New Hampshire; to ask them to 
call the battle-roll anew, and to redeem their 
State, and place her where she has so long 
been, and where she ought to be again, at the 
head of the Republican column. I am not 
here to belittle the Democratic party. I know 
it has power, I know it has elements of strength, 
I know it will fight a great battle this year for 
the control of the Government. I pity the 
weakness or despise the fully that underrates 
the power of the Democratic parly. It has 
vast elements of strength ; it has wealth, preju- 
dice, passion, and pride of race. I know it 
has able men in its ranks, and I have no sym- 
pathy with that disposition which prompts us 
always to belittle whatever we oppose. 

I do not come here to apologize for the Re- 
publican party. I would as soon apologize 
for the spots on the sun that has bathed the 
world to-day in light and beauty. The Repub- 
lican party need.-, no *po!ogy and no defeu.se. 
There is uu body of men iu America to-day 
who from their past history or preaeul position 



have a right to arraign it before the nation, 
before the nations, or before God. 

There was a struggle, beginning in 1832, 
and contfnuing until the spring of 1861 — 
the period of one generation — between these 
antagonistic forces; but it was a struggle of 
thought, of voice, of the press, a struggle of 
votes. Liberty at last triumphed. Then the 
slave-masters raised the banners of rebellion, 
hurled their section into a wicked ?i"? 
brutal, barbarous and bloody civil war. These 
are historic facts. They will go into the his- 
tory of ourcountry ; and when we who are here 
to-night, when the men of this generation shall 
all have passed away, in other days, with 
clearer lights than those of the present, the 
human family will recognize these facts, and 
historians will record them for the study and ad- 
miration or condemnation of after generations. 

We have had a serious contest, a bloody 
struggle, in which some of the bravest and 
noblest have gone down and sleep in soldiers' 
graves. In this struggle, where stood these 
two great parties that divide the nation to-day? 
Where stood the Democratic party? Where 
stood the Republican party? Here to-night I 
assert it, and there is not a man on God's 
earth can contradict it, f-ir the record is against 
him, that from the year 18.32, when William 
Lloyd Garrison and ele\en other faithful and 
fearless men signed their names to the declar- 
ation that black men had a right to liberty, 
and that they would do what they could, sanc- 
tioned by law, humanity, and religion, toemau- 
cipate the bondman, and to lit't up the poor 
and lowly in the land, from that day to this 
hour, every momeutof the time, and on every 
distinct issue, the Democratic parly has been 
on the side of privilege, the side of caste, 
the side of a brutal, ignorant, degraded bar- 
barism. Measured by the standards of the 
philosophers and statesmen of the ages, meas- 
ured by the law of the living God, there has 
not been a moment when it was not clearly, 
plainly, distinctly, unqualifiedly wrong. It has 
been wrong, and ii is wrung now, and I fear it 
will continue to be wrong. 

The Republican party, made up as it has 
been of men who came out of other organ- 
izaiiuus because iaay were convinced that the 



AA'q^' 



party of freedom and humanity was the party 
of the country, has at all times, in every strug- 
gle, in peace and in war, been on the side of 
the country, the sido of liberty, the side of 
justice, the side of humanity, the side of a 
progressive Christian civilization. There has 
«ot been a moment during these forty years, 
whether Garrison A nti-Slavery men, Liberty- 
Party men, Free-Soilers, or Republicans, start- 
ing from only a dozen men and growing up to 
the three and a half millions who will vote 
in November next — I say that there has not 
been a moment in all those years when the' 
champions of human rights have not occupied 
a position thai the Christian men and women 
who belong to it or sympathize with it could 
not take it into their closets, and, on their 
bended knees, invoke the blessing of God upon 
it. I do not know that there are not some men 
80 forgetful of the position of the Democratic 
party that they might ask the blessing upon it 
of that Being who bids us remember those in 
bonds. But I cannot imagine how a man who 
baa spoken for, apologized for, voted for, or 
fought for slavery, privilege, and caste, the 
•ide the Democratic party has taken — I do not 
see how such a mau would dare ask the bless- 
ing of God upon the violation of the doctrines 
of the New Testament, that teach us to love 
ear neighbor. 

I have briefly referred to this history to show 
where the Democratic party has stood and 
now stands, and where the Republican party 
has stood and now stands. The Democratic 
party, unmindful of its record of forty years, 
is asking the toiling men of New Hampshire 
to give it their confidence and their support. 
I should quite as soon think that the Dem- 
ocratic party would go to South Carolina, and 
ask the men whom we Republicaus have made 
free — the men from whose limbs we havesmit- 
ten the fetters, the men into whose souls we 
have breathed the spirit of manhood, the men 
whom we lilted up and put upon their feet, 
made them citizens of the United States, 
secured to them civil and political rights, and 
made them our equals and our peers — 1 should 
quite as soon have supposed the Democratic 
party would go to South Carolina and ask the 
votes of those men, whom we converted from 
things into human beings, with human rights, 
as that it would ask the votes of the toiling 
men who stand on the hills of New Hamp- 
shire. They will tell us that these men were 
black men. 1 have only to say this, that the 
man who would make a black mau a slave 
would make a white man a slave, if he had the 
power to do it. 

I see before me men whom I recognize as 
toiling men ; men who have to support the 
wives of their bosoms and the children of 
their love by manual labor. I call the earnest 
attention of these men to this terrible struggle 
through which we have passed, and to what 
has bueu achieved for the poor toiling men of 
this country during the last twelve years. I 
feel that 1 have the right to speak for toiling 
men and to toiling men. I was born here in 
your county of Strafford. I was born in pov- 



erty ; want sat by my cradle. I know what 
it is to ask a mother for bread when she baa 
none to give. I left my home at ten years of 
age and served an apprenticeship of eleven 
years, receiving a month's schooling each year, 
and at the end of eleven years of hard work, 
a yoke of oxen and six sheep, which brought 
me eighty -four dollars. Eighty- four dollars 
for eleven years of hard toil I I never spent the 
amount of one dollar in money, counting every 
penny, from the time I was born until I was 
twenty-one years of age. I know what it is 
to travel weary miles and ask my fellow-men 
to give me leave to toil. 

1 remember that in October, 1833, I walked 
into your village from my native town, went 
through your mills, seeking employment. If 
anybody had offered me nine dollars a month 
I should have accepted it gladly. I went to 
Salmon Falls, I went to Dover, I went to New- 
market, and tried to get work, without success, 
and I returned home footsore and weary, but 
not discouraged. I put my pack on my back 
and walked to where I now live, in Massachu- 
setts, and learned a mechanic's trade. I know 
the hard lot that toiling men have to endure 
in this world, and every pulsation ot my heart, 
every conviction of my judgment, every aspi- 
ration of my soul, puts me on the side of the 
toiling men of my country — ay, of all coun- 
tries. I became an anti-slavery mau thirty-six 
years ago, because the poor bondman was the 
lowest, most degraded, and helpless type of 
manhood. An anti-slavery man from convic- 
tion is by logical necessity not only the inflex- 
ible foe of the doctrine that capital should own 
laborers, but the unyielding friend of the rights 
of the sons and daughters of toil. 

Let us see what the Republican party haa 
done for the laboring men of this country dur- 
ing the last twelve years. It struck the fetten 
from four and a half million laboring men 
and women; converted them from things into 
men and women. In making them free, it 
struck down that proud, haughty, and domi- 
neering aristocracy of the South that held the 
doctrine — and proclaimed it, too — that " capi- 
tal should own labor;" that the men who toiled 
for wages were "the mud sills of society;" 
that the sla-very of workingmen produced "'» 
class of gentlemen, who were the substitutes 
for an order of nobility." Those were the 
doctrines proclaimed in our ears for forty years 
by the Oalhouns, the McDuffies, the Ham- 
monds, the Rhetts, the Kutfins, the Fitzhughs, 
the Herschell V. Johnsons, and men of that 
class, who laid down the doctrine boldly every- 
where that " slavery was the normal condition 
of laboring men, black and white." In eman- 
cipating these four and a half million black 
men and women we struck down the power 
of the owners of workingmen and working- 
women in this country forever. They made 
labor dishonorable in eight hundred thousand 
square miles of the United States, in the sunny 
South, as they were wont to call it. Laboring 
men from abroad would not go there to toil; 
northern l.'iboring men would not go thereto 
live ; they would not sUad by the side of tbe 



^1 fettered bondmen where labor was dishonored. 
Bnt by the steady, persistent adherence to prin- 
ce ciple of the men trained in the faith of opposi- 
tion to slavery, who now stand in the ranks of 
f^ the Republican party, all this has been changed, 
^•o that to-day the laboring men of New England 
^"J can stand up in South Carolinaby the graves of 
^- Calhoun, of McDuflie, of Pickens, of the leaders 
■%;/ ot the slave power, who proclaimed free society 
a failure — that free men and women when they 
emerged from bondage into freedom were 
classed in four subdivisions, " the hireling, the 
beggar, the thief, and the prostitute" — and 
" look up and be proud in the midst of their 
toil." We have made labor honorable-, even 
in the rice swamps of the Carolinas and Geor- 
pia; wehavetaken the brand of dishonor from 
the brow of labor throughout the country ; and 
in doing that grand work we have done more 
for labor, for the honoranddignity of laboring 
men, than was ever achieved by all the parties 
that arose in this country from the time the 
Pilgrims put their feet upon Plymouth Rock 
up to the year 1800. [Applause.] 

And that grand and immortal achievement 
is not all. We have opened that eight hun- 
dred thousand square miles to free laboring 
men ; they can go there now, they are going 
there now. The German, the Englishman, the 
Irishman, the New England Yankee, the man 
of the middle States, of the Northwest, can 
go there now, engage in the mechanic arts, 
cultivate the soil, and, in all the pursuits of 
life, no longer feel the degradation that rested 
upon workingmen when labor was extorted 
only by the lash. Let the man who toils for 
wages, whether in the mill, on the farm, or in 
the mechanic shop, realize what has been done 
during these last dozen years to lift from toil 
the badge of dishonor, and to open the great 
South to the free laboring men of the world. 
Let him remember with grateful heart that he 
owes it all, under Providence, to the Repub- 
lican party. 

The Republican party was brought especially 
into being, and won the victory, when it elected 
Abraham Lincoln to save the magnificent ter- 
ritories of the United States to the free labor- 
ing men of our country, their children, and 
their children's children, " while grass shall 
grow and water run." It saved that magnifi- 
cent territory to freedom. Auction-blocks, 
bloodhounds, the lash, chains, manacles, can- 
not go there now. They have sunk down to 
the place from whence they came — to the 
bottomless pit, and the lower deep of the 
bottomless pit. 

The Republican party maintains the policy 
of the small farms against the great planta- 
tions. The Democratic party joined with the 
South on that issue, as it did in everything 
and on every issue. We passed the home- 
stead bill, and James Buchanan vetoed it, 
and the Democratic party supported him in 
that veto. The object of that bill was to save 
the vast public aomain to landless men, that 
they might have small farms, rather than that 
a few men might have great plantations. We 
vera defeated ; but the first year the Repub- 



lican party came into power, in the midst of 
the struggle for national existence, it passed 
the homestead bill, and saved the public lands 
to the free laboring men of this country for- 
ever and forever. 

Here to-night I point you to these magnifi- 
cent achievements; I point you to what has 
been accomplished in these twelve years for 
the workingmen, the mechanics, the free 
laborers, the men who toil for wages; and I 
say again to you that those achievements sur- 
pass all that had been achieved in our coun- 
try from the earliest settlement of the colonies 
up to the year 1861, when Abraham Lincoln 
was inaugurated Presidentofthe United States. 
What claim, then, has the Democratic party to 
the vote of a workingman in America? None, 
none whatever. The workingman who sup- 
ports the Democratic party, with its history 
of forty years' hostility to the equal rights of 
millions of toiling men, is not only illogical 
and inconsistent, but indifferent and careless. 
I can see how the lawyer, the manufacturer, 
the banker, even the farmer, who stands on 
his fee-simple acres, may vote the Democratic 
ticket, but I cannot see how the eraancipated 
black man of the South can do it, or how the 
laboring white man who works for wages can 
do it. 

Persistent efforts are making to convince the 
laboring men of New Hampsliire ami to make 
them believe they have a very bard lime of it ; 
that they have to pay taxes ; are, indeed, almost 
taxed out of existence. A document is circu- 
lated to prejudice the laboring men against the 
Administration, on account of the high rates 
of duties. In my judgment, the wise and sound 
policy is to tax luxuries highly ; to put the bur- 
den of taxation upon articles that come in com- 
petition with our own, and to make a free list 
as large as possible. We have a great debt to 
pay. We shall have taxation enough for many 
years. That burden, the legacy of the slave 
Democracy, will rest upon the labor of the 
nation for years to come. 

It was my privilege last summer to spend a 
few weeks in England. I hardly heard any- 
thing else there but complaints of our tariff. 
If I went to a dinner-party, or met English- 
men on ship board or anywhere, they had 
much to say about our exorbitant rates of 
duties. English importers, German import- 
ers, French importers, all berate our rates of 
duties. These identical documents that the 
Democrats are circulating in New Hampshire 
are not paid for by the Democratic parly, but 
by men who want to take care of foreign 
interests rather than our own. [Applause.] 

I asked these men abroad what they wanted. 
"Why," they said, "we want to sell more 
goods in your country." I had no doubt of 
that. They said, "You are a great agricul- 
tural country ; you ought to raise agricultural 
products, and we ought to make the manu- 
factured articles." "Well," I said, " I find 
that you bought thirty-two million dollars' 
worth of wheat last year, and only eight mil- 
lions of it in the United States. I find that 
joa bought millions of dollars of com, and 



&« " "{'""1'^'"^.'^°"^" °fi' i" the United 

They' 4id '"n^' ^" °°.' .'"'■'^ '° t<^" it wfe 
in tie United \^,''''''x.°'^''''^°^ '=^ '"0 l^ish 

."bt^|h:L''4'reffS"Krati 

not hurt my feelin-s a ^reJ i ' i r''^' ''"'^'^ 

or ha,d work." Yof wT" t'"" ^-^ ^""^' 

i count mjst 11 ,me-ab,uuLH^ 7 ''^'"^ 
work Theyha.ethatn,h.t L';;^y^T::,rj'L° 

'i:S^t^:r-^,^!^f^--^;r^5 

lo-daycaa eara from three t-.' four dolnrf, 
ten hour.' work, easier tha hrcoul ■ for ° 
years ago earu ou« dollar Uu ;. „ r V'^ 

to aijeeu hours. The K'/o-fth'^'Ji' 
after I was tvvei.iy.oiie vears„Cn„o r . ^^ 

tbe woods, drove^ea^ftu'milf. o.s""w 'oT 

hrrVu„tu?t"";"i'"'"^\''''y''^*'>'-d-o:i^^^ 

hard unt.l after dark atn.ght, and I received Ibi 
It the magmfaoent sum of six dollars F>I 

asked the men who were there what they paid 
men in baymg-t.me last summer, and^ fhey 
said Irom t«ro dollars to two and a half a dVv 
This was pa,d on the same ground where me^n 
worked forty years ago for fro.n fifty centrto 
four shillings, and took their pay in farni . r. 
duct, not money. I have se'e^^'ome Vh" 

wofk fo TZ-""fi,f '"'? "^^ f^^-^-l^o^ses and 
woiii lor irom tiifv cent!* fn fx,.« ..i 'ii- 
week m;n,;.,„ .1 -^ ^^"^^ 'o 'Our shillings a 
weeu, milk ng the cows, making butter and 
cheese, washing, spinning, and weavin.-dol^f 
all kinds of hard work, I was told /estenJaf 
hat many young women were earning n he 
tnT/- ''?"^' '^ '^'^^' ''"d that those who 

Tar td'a llT: ^''t ^'"t^ f™" "^o do'? 
laj-s and a half a week to three dollars and a 

In 1832, in the great debate ic the Senate on 



KotS''dZs"',tf tt;r^ ^'-T'^' 

any^hert ""w'hy I^'^^J^^ "fctt^ 

to earn iony^Toirar^^' SZt ""1^^"''' 
hundreds of men there norwho in len h ^^ 

WU has no alluremenvs for me I beHe/e 

days' pay. [Loud applause.] ""' 

>V hy ,3 It that the Democrats of New Hamn 

pi"oriaiL,?r"'''''"« '■'■'^^-'-^•^ d:ru3: 

hn ?IH 1 ''"'^ ,'^'^"0""S over this State ? Why 
men" then Aerw '" '^''"''"' P°°^ ''^'^"'-g , 

men of I? f T"' «'"''' '"'' '« '^e working- / 
men of England and Ireland, of Germanv ' 
and France, aye and of Asia and Africa too - 
A man ,s a man, no mailer where he was bor / 
or what blood courses in his veins I befe 
and tt, h'"^'^^" ^'^ V"^ C''"^' 'i'<^d for hi A^ 
ance lei- '^''"°''^^° '"' '""^"^tal inhe-/.' 
I beheve too, in that comprehen../ve 
-uat watcheu rvtr,!,. fi,„ ^ , , ':" 



-- - ..^,..c,c, Luu, in tnat comDrehen 
policy that watches over the poo" and T «,! 
and takes care nf th. ,■„*„.„"! ?,."°,^ .?'"* ''^ R'y 



X„i,i ""'.i.nes over tne poor and Ir 

b ; atr IT ?' ''^ 'T'T' ?'■ '"' ^'^ -° "d "= 
United St.itp',," '"^ the Republic oflthe 

Xf TA^?-:r^--^ecare7o:l^ ' 

friend's talk 'IhT^"'"' '" ''f ^3°"^ Democratic 
irienas talk, that we never had any corrnntinn 
before; that they had always bee^n pure be 
cau.e the, never punched a thief. [App W 



and laughter.] I propose right here to lay 
down this proposition : that the reason why 
this Administration is so assailed is not that 
it has been more ccjrrupt, or as corrupt as 
its modern "prpdecessdrs, but that it is doing 
much to expose thieving and to punish men 
who steal. The Democratic party — I mean the 
modern Democratic party — came into power 
iu 1S29, under General Jackson. 

One man, Samuel Swartwont, in General 
Jackson's day, when the Government raised 
only about thirty million dollars a year, stole 
a million dollars in the New York custom- 
house — nearly as much money as has been 
stolen under this Administration in three years, 
in collecting and paying out nearly twenty-one 
hundred million dollars. The percentage of 
loss under the Administration has been less 
than under any Administration since General 
J'aokson was inaugurated President of the 
United States. There is not a shadow of doubt 
of it. I assert here and now, that there has 
been a less percentage of loss under General 
Grant's administration than under that of 
any other Administration since the days of 
John Quincy Adams. John Tyler, a son of 
President Tyler, iu a letter recently pub- 
lished, states that there were, iu Van Bu- 
ren's administration, ninety-eight receivers 
of the public money, ninety-six of whom be- 
came defaulters. Ninety-six out of ninety- 
eight! [Laughter.] Is there any man here 
to-night who knows that any one of those men 
was ever sent to the penitentiary? 

I believe a Republican thief is a worse man 
than a Democratic thief. [Laughter.] He has 
not had so many bad examples. [Laughter'and, 
applause.] A Republican thief is the v/lcked- 
est and meanest thief iu all the land. He joins 
a great party that was brought into being to 
give freedom to the slave, maintain the unity 
of the country, and preserve the life of the 
nation. In the ranks of that party is a large 
mass of the intelligence of the country, of the 
praying men and women of the country. A 
man who joins that political organization, be- 
trays his trust, and steals the money of the Gov- 
ernment, is a base creature, and the penitni- 
tiary is the only place where lie should dwell. 

The difference between Republicans and 
Democrats on this question is this: the Re- 
publicans try to discover and punish their 
thieves ; the Democrats never punish theirs. 
You cannot tell me to-night of a man who 
stole from the national Government under a 
Democratic administration who was sent to 
the penitentiary. Under this Administration 
several thieves have been sent there. Most 
of their stealing was under the late adminis- 
tration, for there has been little stealing under 
this. Under Andrew Johnson's administration 
mean men got office. He went back on his 
party, on his record, upright Democrats paid 
little attention to him, honest Republicans 
kept away from the White House, and mean 
men of both parties sought the benefits of his 
patronage. About forty collectors of internal 
revenue under his administration became de- 
fjaalters for about a million and three quarters. 



Under the three years of General Grant's ad- 
ministration four collectors became defaulters, 
and for amounts less than two hundred thou- 
sand dollars. 

During the war we paid through the paymaa- 
ter's department of the Army more than a 
thousand million dollars. That money waa 
paid somtimes when troops were on the march, 
sometimes when they were under fire, and we 
lost less than a quarter of a million dollars. 
Never in the history of the human family 
was there any hiaher evidence of integrity. 
In the war of 1812, in paying out the little 
money we paid during that war, we lost about 
two million dollars. Since General Spinner 
entered upon his office as Treasurer of the 
United States, $55,000,000,000 have passed 
through his office, counted by from three to 
four hundred men and women. We have lost 
between fifty and si.xty thousand dollars in 
these eleven yeans, while $55,000,000,000 have 
gone through the office. We punished one 
man, fined him, and he is now trying to get 
back $5,000, for he says we luade him pay 
$5,000 more than he stole. [Laughter.] We 
have sent to prison three trusted clerks, men 
of capacity and ability, whom everybody trusted 
and respected. That is the way we have 
served our thieves. We have sent two men 
who stole under Andrew Johnson's Adminis- 
tration, and were prosecuted under this Ad- 
ministration in Baltimore, to the penitentiary. 

We had a paymaster in the Army ; he was 
not a Republican ; his father was not a Re- 
publican but an old Whig, and Assi-stant Sec- 
retary of the Treasury under Thomas Corwiu-. 
This young man was a college graduate, in- 
herited $100,000, was a member of a Christian 
church, had a noble wife and three beautiful 
children, lived within his income, got a pas- 
sion for stock gambling, losthis $100,000, and 
then took $400,000 of the money of the Gov 
ernment. He was arrested when he might have 
run away. He was sent to the penitentiary 
at Albany for ten yeais. About the same 
time the discovery was made of the boldest 
and most gigantic robbery of the people ever 
perpetrated in ancient, or modern times. Bill 
Tweed — ^" Boss Tweed'" — a man who, a few 
years ago, went through bankruptcy, and who 
is said to have boasted, within a year, that he 
had $18,000,000, and, with him', the tribe of 
Tammany Hall, have been discovered and ex- 
posed. Some of these thieves have gone to 
Europe, some of them are enjoying the pleas- 
ures of the healthful breezes and snow-drifts 
of Canada, some of them are in one part of 
the country and some in another. Whilj w_e 
were trying Major Hodge, and sending him to 
the penitentiary at Albany for ten years, with 
the approval of the entire Republican party 
of the country. Bill Tweed, the greatest thief 
in all the history of the human family, the bosg 
thief of the world, [loud laughter and ap- 
plause,] was sent to Albany, not to the peni- 
tentiary, but the State- House as a State sena- 
tor, by twelve thousand Democratic majority. 
[Applause.] 

These two eases illustrate exactly the differ- 



ence between the two parties: the onedenoanc- 
ing thieves and arresting and punishing them 
when it can, the other never punishing them. 
I am told by leading Democrats, some of them 
members of the committee of seventy, men 
who have done all they could to expose and 
break these Tammany thieves down, that they 
do not believe one of these thieves will ever 
go to the penitentiary. They stole the Erie 
railroad ; they stole the State of New York 
from General Grant in 18G8 ; they have stolen 
their millions from the city ; they have stolen 
judges and stolen juries, and they get elected 
to the Legislature; they do not get sent to the 
State prison. And the men who denied this 
stealing, who denied that they stole the State 
of New York when they knew that they did it, 
who denied the stealing of these Tammany 
Hall men, until it was finally brought out and 
established .so clearly that nobody could longer 
deny it, these very men are accusing the Admin- 
istration of stealing. I have heard before of 
Satan's rebuking sin, but I never saw anything 
so brazen as this. [Loud ajiplause. ] 

There has been collected, under General 
Grant's administration, in three years, nearly 
twelve hundred million dollars — nearly four 
hundred millions a year; there has been paid 
out nearly a thousand million dollars ; making 
about twenty-one hundred million dollars. We 
have lost, out of this immense sum, in all the 
departments of the Government, a million and 
a quarter — less than a fifteenth part of one per 
cent.l 

We have paid out, during these three years, 
ninety million dollars, in pensions, and wehave 
had five defalcations, all of them soldiers, and 
fourof them shed their blood for the country. 
But the Government has not lost a dollar, for 
the agents made good their accounts, or their 
bondsmen did it for them. 

Everybody knows that the Indians have 
been clieated and wronged for years, and that 
many of our Indian wars have grown out of 
our violations of trealy obligations, our bad 
Cw-nduct, and the stealing from the appropria- 
tions for the Indians. General Grant, know- 
ing the Indians and their wrongs, two years 
before he came into the Presidency tried to de- 
vise a plan by which the Indians should receive 
what the Government appropriated for them. 
When he came into power he invited the 
Christian denominations of the country to se- 
lect some good men whom he could send out 
to see that the Indians were not cheated, and 
they selected men like George H. Stuart; like 
Friend Lang, in Maine ; like Friend Hoag, of 
Iowa; like William E. Dodge, of New York; 
and like Edward S. Tobey, of Massachusetts, 
some of the noblest, best, and purest men who 
tread the earth. These noble men have worked 
these three years to save these poor Indians 
from being wronged. The Indian policy of 
General Grant, were there nothing else, is 
enough to immortalize any Administration that 
ever existed in the country, from the founda- 
tion of tbe country. [Ap]ilau3e.] llbasmore 
of justice in it, more of humanity, more of the 
spirit of the divine Master, than can be found 



rn any other deed of the Government, except 
the emancipation of the slaves. It stands by 
the side of that grand act among the great 
achievements of the nation. It will be acknowl- 
edged hereafter, it will go into history, and 
men will applaud it, when many of the men 
who are assailing the present Administration 
sleep in forgotten graves. 

This Administration came into power with 
the pledge to maintain the faith and honor of 
the country, then weakly or wickedly assailed. 
During these last thirty-five months there has 
been paid $287,000,000, saving nearly eighteen 
million dollars a jear in interest. This money 
has been mostly saved, on the one hand, by 
an honest collection of the revenues, for we 
collected the first fifteen months of General 
Grant's administration $07,000,000 more than 
was collected under the same laws in the last 
fifteen months of Johnson's administration; 
and on the other hand, by a reduction of the 
expenses of the Government. From these 
two sources we have paid this $287,000,000. 
Throughout the financial world it is a matter 
of wonder and amazement that the financial 
policy of the United .States should be .so suc- 
cessful. We elected General Grant pledged 
to maintain the faith of the nation, to make 
our debt sacred, and what is the result? Why, 
the $700,000,000 of currency is worth to-day 
$140,000,000 (twenty per cent.) more than it 
was three years ago. Ihe laboring man who 
has earned two dollars to-day has received 
forty cents, in real gold value, more than he 
would have received three years ago this day. 
There has been added twenty percent, to every 
dollar the laboring men of this country have 
earned this day these many months ; and it has 
been added because, of the signal fidelity and 
ability with which that pledge has been kept 
to maintain the faith of the nation, honestly 
collect the revenues, reduce expenses, and 
extinguish the national debt as fast as we 
could. 

We have a class of men who are always look- 
ing behind them. They have never been .satis- 
fied. They have taken their position on the 
great issues of the last forty years and been 
wrong every time. They linger behind their 
age. All their predictions have failed. They 
are the instruments of defeats and failures. 
SiiU these men continue to believe that all the 
statesmanship of the country is gone. They 
once looked up at the slave-masters of the 
South, who were their masters, too, when they 
stood on the heads of their negroes. They 
looked pretty tall then. A great convulsion 
came, and it shook them from their high posi- 
tion, and they look quite as small now as other 
people. But our Democratic friends do not 
see it; the old illusion still haunts them. To 
hear these men talk you would suppose Gen- 
eral Grant was vastly inferior to such great, 
magnificent statesman as Polk, Pierce, and 
Buchanan. Who is General Graul— this man 
so denounced? When the war opened he was 
earning a few hundred dollars a year tanning 
leather in Galena. He offered his services to 
tbe uatioQ, and they were not accepted. He 



went down to Springfield and served there for 
some weeks, helping to enroll and organize 
the regiments they were raising in Illinois. 
Finally, they gave hira a regiment. He had 
uot money enough to buy a sword with which 
to fight the battles of his country, nor a horse 
to ride. You did not know anything about 
him; the nation knew nothing about him; 
few had heard of him. He had served in the j 
Mexican war when a young man, fresh from 
West Point, and won two brevets for gallant I 
conduct, but nobody knew anything of thi^ 
humble man. He took his regiment and 
marched away. He never asked anyiaing of 
the Government; he never disobeyed an 
order; he never made any compht.iit. He 
went straight forward and did his dui v , a quiet, 
silent, modest man. 

About the first thing we heard of him was 
that he took about twenty-five thousand men 
up the Tennessee river, moved on the enemy's 
works, attacked an army of twenty thousand 
rebels, and captured fifteen thousand of them. 
You next heard of him coming on the field of 
Shiloh when it was nearly lost, and when 
asked if he had prepared for a retreat he said 
that one boat would take all that would retreat. 
He defeated the rebel army that had been 
nearly victorious. Then he went down the 
Mississippi river, passed Vicksburg, made a 
movement into the country, attacked the rebel 
armies, captured Vicksburg ; and then you find 
him at Chattanooga to restore a lost battle. 
You have heard of the magnificent victory he 
won on Mission ridge and Lookout mountain. 
He was then brought to Washington, and 
took command of the armies of the country, 
led the army of the Potomac through the 
Wilderness, fighting every day in the month 
of May, 1864. He placed his army before 
Richmond, and when the hour came, moved 
upon the doomed city, and received the sur- 
render of the rebel army at Appomattox. 
Nineteen battles behind him, and all victo- 
ries! He did not march his army to make a 
parade through the rebel capital, but started 
off alone, with his carpet-bag in his hand, for 
Washington, to stop the raising of troops and 
the manufacture of munitions, to make prep- 
arations to disband the army and save expense, 
and to save what he regarded, -and what we all 
regarded as a very important thing, a general 
bankruptcy in the country. 

We Kepublicans turned to thi-: man when 
Andrew Johnson failed us, and aslced him to 
be President. He did not seek the Presi- 
dency; he felt and said that his place at the 
nead of the Army was the post for him. We 
Bade him President, and it was his strength 
and commanding infiuence that carried the 
fourteenth amendment. That same potent in- 
fluence carried the fifteenth amendment, and 
gave the black men the right to vote in all 
the States. When a wail of distress came 
up from the South, when poor black men 
prayed for protection from the murderous 
blows of the midnight assassins of the Ku Klux 
dens. Congress hesitated, faltered, divided. 
Then it was that he came forth with the brief 



message that rallied our scattered ranks like 
a battle order. Clothed with authority he 
h: s striven to protect the weak against the 
c uelties of the strong. Many hundred mem- 
I'ers of the Ku Klux Klan have been arrested, 
several have been convicted, or have confessed 
their guilt, and thirty of those chivalric assas- 
sins are in the penitentiaries. The men who 
stood by the cause of anti-slavery and the pro- 
tection of the black man have found in Gen- 
eral Grant a man who has stood bravely, 
steadily, and consistently on the side of free- 
dom and the equal rights of all meu. 

General Grant has now been President three 
years. He has committed some errors, made 
some mistakes in his appointments. But his 
foreign and domestic policy, the leading meas- 
ures of his Administration, have been and are 
in the interests of the country. The masses 
of the people, who have no persoual griev- 
ances, who only want good government, see 
it, feel it, realize it. With all its faults, they 
believe we have the most reformatory, pro- 
gressive, and best Administration the country 
has seen for forty years; and they are right in 
their convictions. But he is followed by oblo- 
quy and reproach. Again he is passing through 
the "wilderness;" it is darkened, not with the 
smoke of battle, but the storms of insinuation 
and accusation, detraction and denunciation. 
But he will not call retreat. The spirit that 
uttered, when the flame of battle opposed his 
march to the rebel capital, the inspiring words, 
" I will fight it out on this line if it takes all 
summer," is yet unbroken, and exultant foes 
may yet find that another Appomattox lies 
before him. [Applause.] 

In all the struggles of the last sixteen years 
New Hampshire has been on the side of the 
country and of liberty. Forgetting that 
"victory clings to unity," you Republicans 
of New Hampshire allowed your banners last 
year to trail in the dust. You have tasted the 
wholesome discipline of defeat. Now you 
have the power to rise again Forgetting 
personal interests and petty dni'eiencea, ana 
standing shoulder to shoulder, you can redeem 
your State, and thrill the heartsof your friends 
throughout the land. To you. Republicans 
of my native State, I appeal, for unity and 
victory. I ask you, who maintained the ; ght 
of petition when it was cloven down undei he 
lead of Cbarles G. Alherton ; you who sl,i.-"d 
by John P. Hale when smitten by Democrsiy 
fon fidelity to liberty; you who sternly oppose! 
the wicked compromises of 1850; you who 
resisted the repeal of the Missouri compromise 
when sustained by Franklin Pierce ; you who 
were true to Kansas when its skies were 
illumined by the midnight fires of burning 
cabins, and its virgin soil reddened with blood; 
you who helped make Abraham Lincoln 
President ; you who I'ollowed the old flag of 
the Republic over many battle-fields; you who 
sustained by voice and vote that grand series 
of measures by which slavery was annihilated 
and the slave power broken forever ; you who 
helped extirpate caste, enfranchise the black 
man, and give equality to all conditions of 



men ; I implore yon, one and all, to sustain 
DOW that sacred cause for which you have 
toiled and prayed, voted and fought. Stand 
by the Republican party ; stand by, I pray 
you, that great political organization until it 
accomplishes the task assigned it by the needs 
of the country and the providence of God. 
Make safe the beneficent deeds of the past, 
and secure in their full fruition the fruits of 
the seeds planted in faith and nurtured by 
devotion and valor. 

Listen not to the seductive voices which pro- 
claim that the work of the Republican party 
of the United States has been achieved. The 
reforms of the past are not only to be assured, 
but other reforms of magnitude are pressing 
for accomplishment. At any rate, it has a 
great, if not its greatest, work yet to do. That 
work is to humanize, convict, and convert the 
Democratic party of the United States. [Ap- 
plause.] Men cannot be wrong all the time 
for forty years and be convicted of their folly 
in an hour. Until that political organization 
has been convicted of its wickedness, repents 
of its sins, and brings forth the fruits of re- 
pentance, the Government of the United States 
cannot be safe in its control. Its history and 
the elements of which it is composed alike 
forbid that it should be again intrusted with 
power. The Democratic party has at least 
one million of voters in its ranks who 
fought against their country with ballot and 
bullet: men who are only sorry that they 
fought against their native land because they 
failed. You must breathe into their souls the 
spirit of patriotism and the spirit of liberty, 
justice, humanity, and Christian civilization. 

There are a million and a half of voters we 
call "copperheads." I will not call them 
"copperheads;" I will call them what they 
love so much to be called, "conservatives." 
[Laughter.] These men always sneered at 
the cause of liberty, always took the side of 
the old slave masters, stood up for privi- 
lege and casie, and rejoiced, or if they did 
not rejoice did not manifest sorrow, when our 
armies were defeated. To convert these men 
is a great work. I think it will take us a dozen 
years, at least. If in that time we can change 
the hearts of the old rebels of the .South and 
these conservatives here in the North, and get 
them to accept the vital and animating princi- 
ples of Christian civilization, and go for the 
elevation and protection of the poor and the 
lowly, the black men of the South and the 
poor white men of the whole country — ^if we 
can do this grand work in twelve years, the 
»orld will say we have achieved quite as much 
as we did when we put down the rebellion, 
madg four and a hall million men free and 
gave thera citizenship and equal rights. The 
war Democrats, the men who by voice, or vote, 
or bullet, stood by their country in time of war, 
will be utterly helpless if the Democratic party 
comes into power. The old rebel leaders will 
be the head, the conservatives will be the body, 



and these loyal war Democrats will be only the 
tail of the Administration. [Applause.] 

In the past sixteen years we Republicans have 
taken from the Democratic party more than a 
million of its best men — taken the cream right 
offofit. [Applause.] We want the war Demo- 
crats, some of these conservative Democrats, 
and someof the rebel Democrats, too. They are 
our mistaken, erring countrymen. . We want 
their influences and all they have to give on 
the side of Republican ideas, principles, and 
policies; on the side of education and devel- 
opment, and the inspiring influences that ele- 
vate and lift up the masses of our countrymen. 
Never till the masses of the Democratic party 
accept the vital ideas of patriotism, of equal- 
ity for all and protection to all, will it be safe 
to intrust the mighty interests of the nation to 
that political organization. Its "new depart- 
ure is a delusion ; its "passive policy" is a 
snare. Neither the one nor the other will be 
adopted, because itisrigbt. If either be adopted 
at all, it will be in the hope to win power, to 
defeat the full fruition of the great work 
achieved by the Republican |iarty. The ac- 
ceptance of the "new departure" and the 
" passive policy " may be an advance for the 
torpid conservatism of the Democracy, but the 
adoption of either by the nation will be a low- 
ering down, a reaction, an ignominious retreat. 

Republicans of New Hampshire, of New 
England, of the Republic, cling then with 
deathless tenacity to your grand organization, 
that now embodies three and a half million 
men in its ranks. Stand by the Republican 
colors. They symbolize patriotism and liberty, 
justice and humanity, development and pro- 
gress. Trust yourselves; correct your own 
errors ; move right onward, abreast of the 
advancing currents of a progressive republic- 
anism. Look to your history ; do not blur 
nor blot that immortal record. Let it be an 
inspiration, a perennial source of faith and 
hope, in sunshine and in storm. In the years 
to come, when the passions and prejudices of 
these days of conflict shall have sunk to rest 
with us in the bright hereafter, the record of 
the last twelve years will be a brilliant chapter 
in the history of human progress. The world 
will 'note it, and mankind will read it with 
beaming eye and throbbing heart. 

The Republicans of the United States should 
never forget that they lived that history and 
made that history. They should ever remem- 
ber that America, as they have made it, is no 
longer dominated by a slave power, nor guided 
by the councils of slave masters. It is mov- 
ing on a higher plane and working out a 
nobler destiny for humanity than any of the 
foremost nations of the globe. The continued 
triumph of the Republican party assures the 
triumph of equality before the law, and pro- 
tection under the law. Let, then, the Repub- 
licans of New Hampshire, now as in the past, 
lead the Republican columns to a glorioua 
victory. [Loud applause.] 



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